“Not Our Natural Enemy”

Peter Hitchens writes of a recent visit to Iran,

the country that has been designated as the next official enemy of what is still called ‘The West.’ I came away so completely opposed to this silly hostility that I fear I am in danger of stirring up apathy, like the people who spread the myth of the cardboard Panzers. I am a Cold War veteran who believes in deterrence and accepts that there was a genuine Soviet threat. I am an incorrigible Zionist. I think my own country has allowed its armed forces to become lamentably weak. But I think the difference between the official account of Iran as sinister menace and the Iran I experienced is so great that it is a sort of duty to draw attention to it.

He does. This is a point worth considering:

Many Iranians privately fear that their government’s clumsy fumblings with the atom will subject them to a Persian Chernobyl long before it endangers anyone else. In any case, if you wish to become frantic about Islamic bombs, then there is surely a better case for worrying about Pakistan, which already possesses such a bomb along with the missiles to hurl it about the region. Yet Pakistan, mysteriously, is our friend and ally, despite being a lawless military tyranny and the only country on earth to have an army unit specifically trained to mount putsches against its (rarely) elected governments.

I’m not as optimistic as the other Hitch. But this is a debate we need to have. It’s the one we didn’t have about Iraq.

Blog-Rage Explained

A reader writes:

You quote Joe Klein as saying:

[A] fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance … has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere.

I would hazard to say that that’s because the blogosphere has grown sick of the tone of arrogant, condescending, tone-deafness of the inside-the-beltway pundit class, and would appreciate a little more respect, and a little less dismissive presentation of “talk to the hand,” thank you very much.  Six years of bended-knee coverage tends to generate a little fierceness, don’t you think?  Especially when, even after all that time, you *still* get things like that gag-inducing mutual stroke session between Tony Snow, Richard Wolffe, et. al. And Klein wonders why the blogosphere is inflamed!

If/When We Leave

Baghdadroslanrahmanafpgetty

The troubling news from the Turkey-Kurdistan border and the continued sectarian death toll throughout Iraq seem to me to recommend earlier withdrawal-redeployment in Iraq than is currently envisaged. The critical border between Turkey and Kurdish Iraq requires urgent attention; and the extra troops in Baghdad and elsewhere have failed to stem a slow rise in sectarian mass murder and torture. Shouldn’t we be actively considering relinquishing Baghdad in order to salvage what is still salvageable in the north? William Shawcross and Peter Rodman argue today that the costs of such a decision, which they term "defeat", would not be worth paying. But when you analyze their argument, it rests almost entirely on the morale factor, and on a crude notion that the opponents of U.S. occupation of Iraq are somehow one, coherent bloc.

On the morale front, it’s increasingly clear that whatever propaganda advantage al Qaeda gets from US withdrawal (and we’d be fools not to acknowledge they’d get a big lift) must be balanced against the massive propaganda disadvantage we sustain by continuing a doomed occupation. My sense is that al Qaeda has more to gain in the short-term from a US withdrawal; but in the long term, al Qaeda is better served by a continuing and doomed American occupation. Strategically, the balance seems to me to favor withdrawal to the Gulf states and the Kurdish-Turkey border. We’re currently fighting on their terms and to their strengths. Time to reconfigure.

Morally, however, I’m caught short. Will we condemn more innocents to death by staying or by leaving? Would the short term costs of leaving be high but the long-term costs of staying higher? These are largely questions not susceptible to definitive answers. But my sense is that the best way to think of this equation is not a choice between "victory" and "defeat," but between cutting our losses and perpetuating a slow defeat. I hope I’m wrong. But we don’t have that much more time to find out.

(Photo: An Iraqi woman looks on as US soldiers from the 1st battalion 28th Infantry Regiment search a vehicle during a random patrol around Bayaa neighbourhood, southeast of Baghdad, 06 June 2007. Two car bombs detonated at road intersections in a busy Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad today, Iraqi and US defence officials said. Iraqi medics told AFP that seven civilians were killed in the explosions, but US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl denied this, saying the attacks wounded four bystanders. By Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty.)

The Nominee For Surgeon General

Hilzoy has some choice words for Bush’s latest Christianist appointee:

Perhaps Dr. Holsinger doesn’t have any first-hand experience of actual vaginas, though this seems unlikely, since he has four children. Possibly his wife just didn’t have the heart to tell him, and has been suffering all these years in silence. However, as someone who has an actual vagina of my very own, I can assure him that if one were to put a sharp or pointed object into one, "severe damage" would, in fact, result. It would be a very, very, very bad idea to insert, say, a poker, or a carving knife, or a pair of scissors, into a vagina. Just as bad as doing any of these things to a rectum. Really.

Maybe, on the other hand, he thinks that penises are sharp and pointed. Who can say?

The Art Of The Insult

I was watching the great Hitch-Hannity dust-up on YouTube the other day. (I watch it every time I need to be cheered up. If you haven’t seen it, here it is.) It truly elevates the soul, whose existence, of course, Hitch denies. Anyway, I was frustrated because at the very end of the clip, Hitch blurts out an insult that I couldn’t quite catch. A friend tracked it down for me on Wikipedia. For the record:

"If you give Falwell an enema you could bury him in a matchbox".

A new one on me.